At the time, Bobby Lee, CEO of BTC China, said: “It’s an honor to see that BTC China has been propelled ahead to number one in the worldwide rankings. The real credit goes to the people in China, for having recognized the importance and value of bitcoin.”

However, this has since changed dramatically, with Bitcoin Charts showing the exchange's current daily volume at around 3,370 BTC. Bitstamp is currently at the top of Bitcoin Charts' table, with a daily volume of around 15,625 BTC.

Bitcoin exchange data site BTCKan shows Chinese exchange Huobi as having a volume of 86,871 BTC over the past 24 hours, with OkCoin's volume reaching 79,691 BTC in the same period. There have been suggestions that both these exchanges are faking volume data, but Huobi's CEO recently emphatically denied doing so.

Lee told CoinDesk the motive behind dropping trading fees was to create consistency across the platform, having the same 0% rate for litecoin and bitcoin. However, it could be an attempt to gain back some of the customers it lost to its competitors when it imposed fees late last year.